- Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Suzanne Stetkevych
Georgetown University, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Faculty Member
-
A specialist in Classical Arabic Poetry, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College... moreA specialist in Classical Arabic Poetry, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College (1972) and a PhD in Classical Arabic Literature from The University of Chicago (1981). She taught Arabic literature for many years (1986-2013) at Indiana University, Bloomington, before her permanent appointment as Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown University (2014--). She serves as Executive Editor of Brill Studies in MIddle Eastern Literatures.
Her publications, in English and in Arabic, are primarily concerned with the ritual, performance and performative underpinnings of the structure and function of classical Arabic poetry in its literary-historical setting. She engages ritual theory, rite of passage, gift exchange and sacrificial rituals; the socio-economic role of the qasida; the ceremonial aspects of qasida performance as a courtly negotiation of status and legitimacy; the spiritually and politically transformative role of madih nabawi (praise poems to the Prophet Mohammad). Among her books are: Abu Tammam and the Poetics of the Abbasid Age (E.J. Brill 1991); the Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Cornell UP 1993; pbk 2011); The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Indiana UP 2002); The Mantle Odes: Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad in the Arabic Tradition (Indiana UP 2010), and The Cooing of the Dove and the Cawing of the Crow: Late 'Abbasid Poetics in Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri's Saqt al-Zand and Luzum Ma La Yalzam (E.J. Brill, 2022).
She is the winner of the Middle East Medievalists' Lifetime Achievement Award (USA 2017); co-winner (with the late Jaroslav Stetkevych) of the Shiekh Zayed Personality of the Year Award in Arabic Literature (UAE 2019); and laureate of the King Faisal Prize in Arabic Language and Literature (Saudi Arabia, 2022).
She is currently working on a second book of key poems in the madih nabawi (praise poem to the Prophet) tradition. edit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The present study deals with an earlier, pre-Burdah poem that was traditionally highly valued and influential, and yet has been largely neglected in contemporary studies of madīḥ nabawī. This is the 5th/11th century lāmiyyah known by the... more
The present study deals with an earlier, pre-Burdah poem that was traditionally highly valued and influential, and yet has been largely neglected in contemporary studies of madīḥ nabawī. This is the 5th/11th century lāmiyyah known by the nisbah of its author, ash-Shuqrāṭisī (d. 466/1073), a poet from Tawzar in southern Tunisia, al-Qaṣīdah ash-Shuqrāṭisiyyah. This poem appears to represent a crucial step—indeed a “missing link”—in the development of this genre. In particular, its intensive employ of rhetorical devices, especially jinās and ṭibāq, that is characteristic of the badīʿ (novel, innovative) style of High ʿAbbāsid court poetry can tell us much about the rhetorical and aesthetic directions that madīḥ nabawī took in the Post-Classical period.
The crucial literary historical position of this poem, in terms of subject matter, is noted by the Egyptian literary scholar Maḥmūd ʿAlī Makkī (d. 2013) in a brief biographical and bibliographical notice in his 1991 al-Madāʾiḥ al-nabawiyyah: “Perhaps one of the first qaṣīdahs of madīḥ written exclusively to praise the Prophet (pbuh) during the Fāṭimid period, without the madīḥ being subordinate to the enumeration of the virtues of Āl al-Bayt, is the qaṣīdah known as ash-Shaqrāṭīsiyyah, after its author […]”.
The crucial literary historical position of this poem, in terms of subject matter, is noted by the Egyptian literary scholar Maḥmūd ʿAlī Makkī (d. 2013) in a brief biographical and bibliographical notice in his 1991 al-Madāʾiḥ al-nabawiyyah: “Perhaps one of the first qaṣīdahs of madīḥ written exclusively to praise the Prophet (pbuh) during the Fāṭimid period, without the madīḥ being subordinate to the enumeration of the virtues of Āl al-Bayt, is the qaṣīdah known as ash-Shaqrāṭīsiyyah, after its author […]”.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Starting with the mnemonic imperative governing the use of rhetoric in pre- and early Islamic Arabic oral poetry, this essay proposes that in the later literary periods, rhetorical devices, now free of their mnemonic obligation, took on... more
Starting with the mnemonic imperative governing the use of rhetoric in pre- and early Islamic Arabic oral poetry, this essay proposes that in the later literary periods, rhetorical devices, now free of their mnemonic obligation, took on further communicative or expressive functions. In the High CAbbāsid age, rhetorical devices are “retooled” to serve as the “linguistic correlative” of Islamic hegemony as witnessed in caliphal court panegyrics of the rhetorically complex badīc style. Finally, the “rhetorical excess” of the post-classical badīciyyah (a poem to the Prophet Muḥammad in which each line must exhibit a particular rhetorical device) is interpreted as a memorial structure typical of the medieval manuscript (as opposed to modern print) tradition.
Research Interests:
... 4. Busiri, Sharaf al-Din Muhammad ibn Sa'id, 1213?–1296?— Criticism and interpretation. ... 2 (2006), 145–89; and “From Sīrah to Qa»īdah: Poetics and Polemics in al-Bu»īrī's Qa»īdat al-Burdah (Mantle Ode), Journal of... more
... 4. Busiri, Sharaf al-Din Muhammad ibn Sa'id, 1213?–1296?— Criticism and interpretation. ... 2 (2006), 145–89; and “From Sīrah to Qa»īdah: Poetics and Polemics in al-Bu»īrī's Qa»īdat al-Burdah (Mantle Ode), Journal of Arabic Literature 38 no. 1 (2007), 1–52. ...
... Deserving of special mention for their steadfastness during good times and bad at Indiana University are Asha Swarup, Consuelo Lopez-Mori 11 as, John Walbridge, Hussein Noor Kadhim, Majd al-Mallah, Ayman el-Haj, Samer Mahdy Ali, Akiko... more
... Deserving of special mention for their steadfastness during good times and bad at Indiana University are Asha Swarup, Consuelo Lopez-Mori 11 as, John Walbridge, Hussein Noor Kadhim, Majd al-Mallah, Ayman el-Haj, Samer Mahdy Ali, Akiko Motoyoshi, Imed Nsiri, and Paul ...
Research Interests:
Throughout the centuries, the Rāʾiyyah (poem rhymed in rāʾ) has been the most celebrated poem of the warrior-prince ʾAbū Firās al-Ḥamdānī (320/932–357/968). A cousin of the Ḥamdānid emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawlah, ʾAbū Firās was captured... more
Throughout the centuries, the Rāʾiyyah (poem rhymed in rāʾ) has been the most celebrated poem of the warrior-prince ʾAbū Firās al-Ḥamdānī (320/932–357/968). A cousin of the Ḥamdānid emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawlah, ʾAbū Firās was captured by the Byzantines in 351/962 and languished in captivity for four years until the general exchange of prisoners in 355/966, all the while producing poetic pleas to Sayf al-Dawlah, directly or through others, to pay the ransom to secure his release. ʾAbū Firās’s poetic renown rests primarily on poems of this period, termed al-Rūmiyyāt (Byzantine poems), among them the Rāʾiyyah. This study offers a first expository reading of the Rāʾiyyah, and then a second interpretative re-reading, not according to the Romanticist evaluation based on the apparent emotional spontaneity and sincerity of its erotic prelude (nasīb) and boast (fakhr), but rather from a performative perspective that interprets the poem as a finely rhetorically crafted speech act, characterized by indirection and ambiguity and aimed at securing the prisoner’s ransom and release.
Research Interests:
This study explores the relationship between the extraordinary poetic achievement of Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1016) in his highly lyrical and influential Dīwān, on the one hand, and the literary-religious accomplishment of his unrivalled... more
This study explores the relationship between the extraordinary poetic achievement of Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1016) in his highly lyrical and influential Dīwān, on the one hand, and the literary-religious accomplishment of his unrivalled compilation of the sermons, epistles, and sayings of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Nahj al-balāghah, on the other. It examines the interplay among the contemporary Mutanabbī-dominated literary scene, the Imāmī Shīʿite dominated Baghdādī politico-religious scene, and, in Islamic scholarship generally, the increasingly balāghah- (rhetoric)-focused theological discourse on iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the miraculous inimitability of the Qurʾān). Finally, the paper attempts to connect al-Raḍī’s sense of alienation and dispossession from his hereditary right to rule—one that he has found so strikingly expressed in the sermons of his forefather ʿAlī—and the extraordinary lyrical-elegiac strain in his own poetry.
Research Interests:
Contents: Introduction. Oral composition in pre-Islamic poetry, James T. Monroe Structuralist interpretations of pre-Islamic poetry: critique and new dimensions, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych Islamic kingship and Arabic panegyric poetry of... more
Contents: Introduction. Oral composition in pre-Islamic poetry, James T. Monroe Structuralist interpretations of pre-Islamic poetry: critique and new dimensions, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych Islamic kingship and Arabic panegyric poetry of the early 9th century, Stefan Sperl The poetic coterie of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 247 H.): a contribution to the analysis of authorities of socio-literary legitimation, J. E. Bencheike The uses of the qasida: thematic and structural patterns in a poem of Bashshar, Julie Scott Meisami Abbasid praise poetry in light of dramatic discourse and speech act theory, Beatrice Gruendler Revisiting Layla al-Akhyaliya's trespass, Dana Sajdi Time and reality in nasib and ghazal, Renate Jacobi Heterotopia and the wine poem in early Islamic culture, Yaseen Noorani Sensibility and synaesthesia: Ibn al-Rumi's singing slave girl, Akiko Motoyoshi Name and epithet: the philology and semiotics of animal nomenclature in early Arabic poetry, Jaroslav Stetkevych Guises of the ghul: dissembling simile and semantic overflow in the classical Arabic nasib, Michael A. Sells From primary to secondary qasidas: thoughts on the development of classical Arabic poetry, M.M. Badawi Toward a redefinition of 'badi' poetry, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych. Index.
Research Interests:
This article contrasts techniques from non-narrative, poetic and Qurʾānic texts with the narratives of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (the Stories of the Prophets) in order to interpret passages on Sulaymān/Solomon in pre- and early Arabic-Islamic... more
This article contrasts techniques from non-narrative, poetic and Qurʾānic texts with the narratives of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (the Stories of the Prophets) in order to interpret passages on Sulaymān/Solomon in pre- and early Arabic-Islamic texts. Beginning with the renowned non-narrative Sulaymān passage in the pre-Islamic poet al-Nābighah al-Dhubyānī’s ode of apology to the Lakhmid king al-Nuʿmān ibn al-Mundhir and several Qurʾānic passages concerning Sulaymān, the article compares these to the eminently narrative prose renditions of Solomonic legend that appear in Qurʾānic commentary and the (related) popular Stories of the Prophets (Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ). I argue that verbal structures and rhetorical techniques characteristic of non-narrative forms such as poetry and the Qurʾān have the effect of preserving and stabilizing the essential panegyric (poetic) or salvific (Qurʾānic) message in a manner that the constantly mutating popular narrative forms neither strive for nor achieve.
Research Interests:
Abstract This study argues that the third AH/ninth CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic... more
Abstract This study argues that the third AH/ninth CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that was subsequently adopted by the poets and thinkers of the Nahḍa or ‘Arab Awakening’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Challenged to create a poetry that would serve as the linguistic correlative of the astounding and unprecedented might and dominion of the rulers of the Arab-Islamic state, the Abbasid Modernist Poets (al-shuʿarāʾ al-muḥdathūn) invented a powerfully and radically innovative poetic style, termed badīʿ. The panegyric odes of poets such as Abū Tammām and al-Buḥturī were canonized so as to promote a vision of an Arab-Islamic Golden Age and, further, to serve as models for the expression of Arab-Islamic hegemony and the conferral and contestation of legitimate authority. In the Nahḍa of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Neo-Classical poets such as Aḥmad Shawqī recouped the Abbasid master poets to both retroject and project a vision of an Arab-Islamic ‘Enlightenment’. Finally, this study examines the fraught relationship of the post-Naksa (1967) Arab poet, as exemplified in the modern Yemeni poet ʿAbd Allāh al-Baradūnī, with the poets and poetry of the Golden Age.
Research Interests:
The premier work of Islamic devotional literature of the post-classical period is undoubtedly the Mantle Ode (Qaṣīdat al-Burda) of al-Būṣīrī (d. 694–696/1294–1297), which generated a vast body of derivative works composed in the hope of... more
The premier work of Islamic devotional literature of the post-classical period is undoubtedly the Mantle Ode (Qaṣīdat al-Burda) of al-Būṣīrī (d. 694–696/1294–1297), which generated a vast body of derivative works composed in the hope of acquiring the blessing or baraka of the poem. Among these was the badīʿiyya, a praise poem to the Prophet Muḥammad (madīḥ nabawī) that is a contrafaction (muʿāraḍa) of al-Būṣīrī’s Burda in which each line exhibits a particular rhetorical device. The present paper offers a re-evaluation of the badīʿiyya as a hybrid devotional performance that combines the science of rhetoric—the essential element of the tenet of the miraculousness of the Qurʾān (iʿjāz al-Qurʾān)—with the art of praise poetry to the Prophet (madīḥ nabawī) as a reenactment of the miracle of the Qurʾān and of the baraka of al-Būṣīrī’s Burda. It takes as its main example Al-Kāfiya al-Badīʿiyya of Ṣafī ad-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 749 or 750/1348 or 1349) to examine the rhetoric and aesthetics of t...
Research Interests:
The blind Syrian poet, man of letters and scholar, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (363 H/973 CE-449 H/1057 CE) is the author of two celebrated diwans. The second of these, his controversial double-rhymed and alphabetized, Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam... more
The blind Syrian poet, man of letters and scholar, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (363 H/973 CE-449 H/1057 CE) is the author of two celebrated diwans. The second of these, his controversial double-rhymed and alphabetized, Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam (Requiring What is Not Obligatory), known simply as Al-Luzūmiyyāt (The Compulsories), features his uninhibited, often highly ironic and usually pessimistic, religious, and ‘philosophical’ ideas along with mordant criticism of politics, religion, and humanity in general. In his introduction, he abjures the corrupt and worldly qaṣīdah poetry of his otherwise celebrated early diwan, Saqṭ al-Zand (Sparks of the Fire-Drill), to turn in al-Luzūmiyyāt to a poetry that is “free from lies.” In the present study I take a ‘biopsy’ from Al-Luzūmiyyāt of the eight poems with the double rhyme b-d to explore al-Maʿarrī’s excavation and reclamation of meaning from the Ancient Arabian past through the intertwined legacies of philology and poetic lore. The constraint (lu...
Research Interests:
Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī's (d. 449/1058) double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm mā lā yalzam. The first takes the seventh/thirteenth-century... more
Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī's (d. 449/1058) double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm mā lā yalzam. The first takes the seventh/thirteenth-century littera-teur Ibn al-Qifṭī's account of the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd's Mosque of Damascus excavations, which was read before al-Maʿarrī, as the inspiration for the poem. This reading elicits the metaphorical connection, through the ubi sunt topos of the Arabic nasīb, between the extinct Arab tribe Ṭasm and the long-lost civilization unearthed in Damascus, and, further, the high irony with which the poem predicts the ineluctable annihilation of Islam itself. The second reading interprets the poem as the product of the extreme double-rhyme strictures al-Maʿarrī has imposed on himself-here the rhyme in-smu. The use of Ṭasm/ṭasm (erasure, obliteration) inexorably drives the poem from the lore of tribal extermination to the lexical and motival world of the nasīb.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... The Qadariyah began their heresy in the time of Hasan, and Wasil seceded ictazala from them and from his master because of his doctrine of the position between the two positions (al-manzilah bayna al-manzilatayn). He and his followers... more
... The Qadariyah began their heresy in the time of Hasan, and Wasil seceded ictazala from them and from his master because of his doctrine of the position between the two positions (al-manzilah bayna al-manzilatayn). He and his followers were then called Muctazilah .... ...
Research Interests:
... poem and the khabar that accompanies it are the same as those in the story of the announcement to Imru' al-Qays of the death of his father Hujr at the hands of the treacherous Bani Asad, al-IsbahdnTi ... Shacith, the... more
... poem and the khabar that accompanies it are the same as those in the story of the announcement to Imru' al-Qays of the death of his father Hujr at the hands of the treacherous Bani Asad, al-IsbahdnTi ... Shacith, the sons of 'Amir ibm Dhahl ibn Thaclabah, al-AsmaAciYat, p. 155. ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... are no longer dealing with the primary orality of the Jāhiliyyah, but rather with the memorial culture of the medieval manuscript tradition, in which a written base text with marked mnemonic features (poetry, the Qur'ān,... more
... are no longer dealing with the primary orality of the Jāhiliyyah, but rather with the memorial culture of the medieval manuscript tradition, in which a written base text with marked mnemonic features (poetry, the Qur'ān, didactic poems such as the Alfiyyah of Ibn Malik) serves as ...
Research Interests:
From the perspective of contemporary Western societies, where it has become conventional to draw a line between the private and public spheres, the classical and modern poetics of the Arab world offer a fascinating window onto the... more
From the perspective of contemporary Western societies, where it has become conventional to draw a line between the private and public spheres, the classical and modern poetics of the Arab world offer a fascinating window onto the interplay of the public and private, the personal and political.
In the Classical Arabic tradition of Abbasid court poetry (9th-10th century CE), we find that the poetics of the nasīb—the elegiac prelude of the classical ode (qaṣīdah)—engage the listener through the most intimate and affective personal tones to speak of love and loss, and yet often simultaneously—allegorically, metaphorically, or merely allusively—refer to stark political realities. Even in the courtly praise (madḥ) section of the qaṣīdah, the tone and expressions used to convey political bonds of allegiance—or their rupture—often strike us as highly intimate and emotional.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Arab world has experienced the onslaught of Modern Western imperialism, colonialism, and military aggression, as well as the repression and brutality of home-grown authoritarian regimes. In these circumstances, Arab Free Verse poetry exhibits a variety of complex interplays between the intimate and personal on the one hand and the public and political on another, in ways that challenge the extent to which these two spheres can be distinguished.
The present study examines examples from two 10th century Classical Arab poets al-Mutanabbī and Abū Firās al-Ḥāmdānī and three 20th century Modern Arab Free Verse poets, Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Ḥijāzī, Buland al-Ḥaydarī, and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, to explore the interplay of the personal and public in Arabic poetry at two distinct historical periods.
In the Classical Arabic tradition of Abbasid court poetry (9th-10th century CE), we find that the poetics of the nasīb—the elegiac prelude of the classical ode (qaṣīdah)—engage the listener through the most intimate and affective personal tones to speak of love and loss, and yet often simultaneously—allegorically, metaphorically, or merely allusively—refer to stark political realities. Even in the courtly praise (madḥ) section of the qaṣīdah, the tone and expressions used to convey political bonds of allegiance—or their rupture—often strike us as highly intimate and emotional.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Arab world has experienced the onslaught of Modern Western imperialism, colonialism, and military aggression, as well as the repression and brutality of home-grown authoritarian regimes. In these circumstances, Arab Free Verse poetry exhibits a variety of complex interplays between the intimate and personal on the one hand and the public and political on another, in ways that challenge the extent to which these two spheres can be distinguished.
The present study examines examples from two 10th century Classical Arab poets al-Mutanabbī and Abū Firās al-Ḥāmdānī and three 20th century Modern Arab Free Verse poets, Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Ḥijāzī, Buland al-Ḥaydarī, and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, to explore the interplay of the personal and public in Arabic poetry at two distinct historical periods.
Research Interests:
... same tripartite form and chiastic progression that characterize or inform the rites of passage and of sacrifice. ... 16 Abu 'All Ahmad b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Marzuql, Sharh Diwan al-Hamasah, ed ... Amln and... more
... same tripartite form and chiastic progression that characterize or inform the rites of passage and of sacrifice. ... 16 Abu 'All Ahmad b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Marzuql, Sharh Diwan al-Hamasah, ed ... Amln and 'Abd al-Salam Harun (Cairo, 1968), n, 827; Abu Zakariyya Yahya b. 'All ...
Research Interests:
هذه الدراسة عبارة عن الخطوة التالية في مشروعي النقدي لإعادة تقييم ديوانيْ أبي العلاء المعرّي سقط الزند ولزوم ما لا يلزم. وإن كنت قد وجدت أنّ المقاربة المناسبة لإعادة قراءة قصائد الديوان الأول، التي تقع في نطاق القصيدة الكلاسيكية من حيث... more
هذه الدراسة عبارة عن الخطوة التالية في مشروعي النقدي لإعادة تقييم ديوانيْ أبي العلاء المعرّي سقط الزند ولزوم ما لا يلزم. وإن كنت قد وجدت أنّ المقاربة المناسبة لإعادة قراءة قصائد الديوان الأول، التي تقع في نطاق القصيدة الكلاسيكية من حيث الشكل والأغراض والأهداف الاجتماعية والسياسية، هي نظرية القول - الفعل (Speech Act Theory) والكلام الأدائي (Performative Speech) فإن المشروع المبرمج للزوميات، بما فيه من قطع شعرية منعزلة عن عالم القصيدة الاجتماعي والسياسي وخاضعة لنظام طاغٍ من القافية اللزومية والترتيب الأبجدي، يتطلب مقاربة مختلفة هي أقرب إلى الأسلوبية (Stylistics).
فأسعى في هذه الدراسة إلى قراءة مجموعة معيّنة من قطع اللزوميات من خلال القافية اللزومية: للدال مع الباء. حيث الجمع في القافية بين هذين الحرفين يؤدّي لا محالة إلى اسميْ العلم "لَبيد" و "لُبَد" ومن ثم إلى الأساطير والأشعار المترتّبة عليهما، ثم إلى العقدة الاشتقاقية-السيميائية التي تجمعهما بعضا إلى بعض، كما يؤدّي أيضاً إلى مجموعة محدودة للغاية من الأسماء والمفردات والصور والمعاني المتولدة عنها. وفي سياق القوافي اللزومية المحدودة الإمكانيات يبدو أنّ أسماء العلم تؤدّي دوراً فعّالاً في عملية استدعاء المفردات وفق المتطلبات الصوتية، أو قُلْ في عملية التداعي اللفظي - الصوتي؛ حيث نجد في مجموعة قافية الدال مع الباء، على سبيل المثال، استدعاء لشاعر المعلّقات لبيد بن ربيعة وللشاعر الجاهلي عبيد بن الأبرص، ولُبَد آخِر نسور لقمان الحكيم السبعة.
فأسعى في هذه الدراسة إلى قراءة مجموعة معيّنة من قطع اللزوميات من خلال القافية اللزومية: للدال مع الباء. حيث الجمع في القافية بين هذين الحرفين يؤدّي لا محالة إلى اسميْ العلم "لَبيد" و "لُبَد" ومن ثم إلى الأساطير والأشعار المترتّبة عليهما، ثم إلى العقدة الاشتقاقية-السيميائية التي تجمعهما بعضا إلى بعض، كما يؤدّي أيضاً إلى مجموعة محدودة للغاية من الأسماء والمفردات والصور والمعاني المتولدة عنها. وفي سياق القوافي اللزومية المحدودة الإمكانيات يبدو أنّ أسماء العلم تؤدّي دوراً فعّالاً في عملية استدعاء المفردات وفق المتطلبات الصوتية، أو قُلْ في عملية التداعي اللفظي - الصوتي؛ حيث نجد في مجموعة قافية الدال مع الباء، على سبيل المثال، استدعاء لشاعر المعلّقات لبيد بن ربيعة وللشاعر الجاهلي عبيد بن الأبرص، ولُبَد آخِر نسور لقمان الحكيم السبعة.
Research Interests:
The blind Syrian poet, man of letters and scholar, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (363 H/973 CE-449 H/1057 CE) is the author of two celebrated diwans. The second of these, his controversial double-rhymed and alphabetized, Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam... more
The blind Syrian poet, man of letters and scholar, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (363 H/973 CE-449 H/1057 CE) is the author of two celebrated diwans. The second of these, his controversial double-rhymed and alphabetized, Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam (Requiring What is Not Obligatory), known simply as Al-Luzūmiyyāt (The Compulsories), features his uninhibited, often highly ironic and usually pessimistic, religious, and 'philosophical' ideas along with mordant criticism of politics, religion, and humanity in general. In his introduction, he abjures the corrupt and worldly qaṣīdah poetry of his otherwise celebrated early diwan, Saqṭ al-Zand (Sparks of the Fire-Drill), to turn in al-Luzūmiyyāt to a poetry that is "free from lies." In the present study I take a 'biopsy' from Al-Luzūmiyyāt of the eight poems with the double rhyme b-d to explore al-Maʿarrī's excavation and reclamation of meaning from the Ancient Arabian past through the intertwined legacies of philology and poetic lore. The constraint (luzūm) of the double b-d rhyme in these poems leads inexorably to two proper names, the legends and poetry associated with them, and the etymological-semantic complex that yokes them together and generates related names and themes. The first name is that of the renowned poet of the Muʿallaqāt, Labīd ibn Rabīʿah; the second is that of Lubad, the last of the seven vultures whose lifespans measured out the days of the legendary pre-Islamic sage, Luqmān. Not surprisingly , the ancient Jāhilī poet-knight ʿAbīd ibn al-Abraṣ, likewise, cannot escape the pull of the b-d rhyme. The study demonstrates the mythophoric power of proper names from the Arabic poetic and folkloric past, once lexically and morphologically generated by the double consonants of the rhyme pattern, to evoke poems and legends of the past but also, by the force of al-Maʿarrī's moral as well as prosodic constraints, to be reconstructed in accordance with the prosodic and moral constraints of Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam, into a new poetic form, the luzūmiyyah. Quite at odds with the moral, Downloaded from Brill.com11/15/2020 04:48:46AM via Georgetown University
Research Interests:
ترجمة إبراهيم عامر ل Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, "Performative Poetics in ʿAbbāsid Poetry: A Re-Reading of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī’s Rāʾiyyah: Arāka ʿaṣiyya al-damʿi.” Annals of the Japan Association of Middle Eastern Studies 29-2 (2013):... more
ترجمة إبراهيم عامر ل
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, "Performative Poetics in ʿAbbāsid Poetry: A Re-Reading of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī’s Rāʾiyyah: Arāka ʿaṣiyya al-damʿi.” Annals of the Japan Association of Middle Eastern Studies 29-2 (2013): 107-44.
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, "Performative Poetics in ʿAbbāsid Poetry: A Re-Reading of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī’s Rāʾiyyah: Arāka ʿaṣiyya al-damʿi.” Annals of the Japan Association of Middle Eastern Studies 29-2 (2013): 107-44.
Research Interests:
This study explores the relationship between the extraordinary poetic achievement of Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1016) in his highly lyrical and influential Dīwān, on the one hand, and the literary-religious accomplishment of his unrivalled... more
This study explores the relationship between the extraordinary poetic achievement of Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1016) in his highly lyrical and influential Dīwān, on the one hand, and the literary-religious accomplishment of his unrivalled compilation of the sermons, epistles, and sayings of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Nahj al-balāghah, on the other. It examines the interplay among the contemporary Mutanabbī-dominated literary scene, the Imāmī Shīʿite dominated Baghdādī politico-religious scene, and, in Islamic scholarship generally, the increasingly balāghah-(rhetoric)-focused theological discourse on iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the miraculous inimitability of the Qurʾān). Finally, the paper attempts to connect al-Raḍī's sense of alienation and dispossession from his hereditary right to rule-one that he has found so strikingly expressed in the sermons of his forefather ʿAlī-and the extraordinary lyrical-elegiac strain in his own poetry. Keywords rhetoric-lyrical poetry-description-sermon-Shīʿism-ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib-al-Sharīf al-Raḍī-ʿAbbāsid poetry-Nahj al-balāghah-khuṭbah-qaṣīdah-Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān
Research Interests:
Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī's (d. 449/1058) double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm mā lā yalzam. The first takes the seventh/thirteenth-century... more
Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī's (d. 449/1058) double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm mā lā yalzam. The first takes the seventh/thirteenth-century littera-teur Ibn al-Qifṭī's account of the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd's Mosque of Damascus excavations, which was read before al-Maʿarrī, as the inspiration for the poem. This reading elicits the metaphorical connection, through the ubi sunt topos of the Arabic nasīb, between the extinct Arab tribe Ṭasm and the long-lost civilization unearthed in Damascus, and, further, the high irony with which the poem predicts the ineluctable annihilation of Islam itself. The second reading interprets the poem as the product of the extreme double-rhyme strictures al-Maʿarrī has imposed on himself-here the rhyme in-smu. The use of Ṭasm/ṭasm (erasure, obliteration) inexorably drives the poem from the lore of tribal extermination to the lexical and motival world of the nasīb.
Research Interests:
The premier work of Islamic devotional literature of the post-classical period is undoubtedly the Mantle Ode (Qaṣīdat al-Burda) of al-Būṣīrī (d. 694–6/1294–7), which generated a vast body of derivative works composed in the hope of... more
The premier work of Islamic devotional literature of the post-classical period is undoubtedly the Mantle Ode (Qaṣīdat al-Burda) of al-Būṣīrī (d. 694–6/1294–7), which generated a vast body of derivative works composed in the hope of acquiring the blessing or baraka of the poem. Among these was the badīʿiyya, a praise poem to the Prophet Muḥammad (madīḥ nabawī) that is a contrafaction (muʿāraḍa) of al-Būṣīrī’s Burda in which each line exhibits a particular rhetorical device. The present paper offers a re-evaluation of the badīʿiyya as a hybrid devotional performance that combines the science of rhetoric—the essential element of the tenet of the miraculousness of the Qurʾān (iʿjāz al-Qurʾān)—with the art of praise poetry to the Prophet (madīḥ nabawī) as a reenactment of the miracle of the Qurʾān and of the baraka of al-Būṣīrī’s Burda. It takes as its main example Al-Kāfiya al-Badīʿiyya of Ṣafī ad-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 749 or 750/1348 or 1349) to examine the rhetoric and aesthetics of the badīʿiyya in light of contemporary ideas of performance and performativity.
Research Interests:
Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s (363 /973 – 449 /1058) double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam. The first takes the 7th/13th c. litterateur... more
Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s (363 /973 – 449 /1058) double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam. The first takes the 7th/13th c. litterateur Ibn al-Qifṭī’s account of the Umayyad Caliph al-Walīd’s Damascus Mosque excavations, which was read before al-Maʿarrī, as the inspiration for the poem. This reading elicits the metaphorical connection, through the ubi sunt topos of the Arabic nasīb, between the extinct Arab tribe Ṭasm and the long-lost civilization unearthed in Damascus, and, further, the high irony with which the poem predicts the ineluctable annihilation of Islam itself. The second reading interprets the poem as the product of the extreme double-rhyme strictures al-Maʿarrī has imposed on himself—here the rhyme in -smu. The name/word Ṭasm/ṭasm (erasure, obliteration) inexorably drives the poem from the lore of tribal extermination to the lexical and motival world of the nasīb.
Research Interests:
This study argues that the 3rd AH/ 9th CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that was... more
This study argues that the 3rd AH/ 9th CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that was subsequently adopted by the poets and thinkers of the 19th-20th century Nahḍa or ‘Arab Awakening’. Challenged to create a poetry that would serve as the linguistic correlative of the astounding and unprecedented might and dominion of the rulers of the Arab-Islamic state, the Abbasid Modernist Poets (al-shuʿarāʾ al-muḥdathūn) invented a powerfully and radically innovative poetic style, termed badīʿ. The panegyric odes of poets such as Abū Tammām and al-Buḥturī were canonized so as to promote a vision of an Arab-Islamic Golden Age and, further, to serve as models for the expression of Arab-Islamic hegemony and the conferral and contestation of legitimate authority. In the 19th-20th century Nahḍa, Neo-Classical, poets such as Aḥmad Shawqī, recouped the Abbasid master poets to both retroject and project a vision of an Arab-Islamic ‘Enlightenment’. Finally, this study examines the fraught relationship of the post-Naksa (1967) Arab poet, as exemplified in the modern Yemeni poet ʿAbd Allāh al-Baradūnī, with the poets and poetry of the Golden Age.
Research Interests:
This article contrasts techniques from non-narrative, poetic and Qurʾānic texts with the narratives of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (the Stories of the Prophets) in order to interpret passages on Sulaymān/Solomon in pre-and early Arabic-Islamic... more
This article contrasts techniques from non-narrative, poetic and Qurʾānic texts with the narratives of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (the Stories of the Prophets) in order to interpret passages on Sulaymān/Solomon in pre-and early Arabic-Islamic texts. Beginning with the renowned non-narrative Sulaymān passage in the pre-Islamic poet al-Nābighah al-Dhubyānī's ode of apology to the Lakhmid king al-Nuʿmān ibn al-Mundhir and several Qurʾānic passages concerning Sulaymān, the article compares these to the eminently narrative prose renditions of Solomonic legend that appear in Qurʾānic commentary and the (related) popular Stories of the Prophets (Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ). I argue that verbal structures and rhetorical techniques characteristic of non-narrative forms such as poetry and the Qurʾān have the effect of preserving and stabilizing the essential panegyric (poetic) or salvific (Qurʾānic) message in a manner that the constantly mutating popular narrative forms neither strive for nor achieve.
Research Interests:
Study of the genesis of a Luzumiyyah by Abu al-`Ala' al-Ma`arriز
Research Interests:
This study argues that the third AH/ninth CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that... more
This study argues that the third AH/ninth CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that was subsequently adopted by the poets and thinkers of the Nahḍa or ‘Arab Awakening’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Challenged to create a poetry that would serve as the linguistic correlative of the astounding and unprecedented might and dominion of the rulers of the Arab-Islamic state, the Abbasid Modernist Poets (al-shuʿarāʾ al-muḥdathūn) invented a powerfully and radically innovative poetic style, termed badīʿ. The panegyric odes of poets such as Abū Tammām and al-Buḥturī were canonized so as to promote a vision of an Arab-Islamic Golden Age and, further, to serve as models for the expression of Arab-Islamic hegemony and the conferral and contestation of legitimate authority. In the Nahḍa of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Neo-Classical poets such as Aḥmad Shawqī recouped the Abbasid master poets to both retroject and project a vision of an Arab-Islamic ‘Enlightenment’. Finally, this study examines the fraught relationship of the post-Naksa (1967) Arab poet, as exemplified in the modern Yemeni poet ʿAbd Allāh al-Baradūnī, with the poets and poetry of the Golden Age.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study proposes to examine the role of the Christian poet al-Akhṭal al-Taghlibī (ca. 20/640-before 92/710) as panegyrist to the court of the Umayyad caliph, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. It argues that, as with other insignia of... more
This study proposes to examine the role of the Christian poet al-Akhṭal al-Taghlibī (ca. 20/640-before 92/710) as panegyrist to the court of the Umayyad caliph, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. It argues that, as with other insignia of authority--such as the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the minting of Umayyad coinage--poetry played an essential role in the consolidation and construction of Umayyad authority and legitimacy after the end of the Fitna of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr and the Marwānid Restoration. I will not rehearse here the biography and bibliography of al-Akhṭal al-Taghlibī. Rather, I will focus on the examination of several key poems and anecdotes that have been oft cited or repeated in both classical Arabic literary compendia and modern Arabic and western literary studies, but have not, in my view, been interpreted in such a way as to reveal the performative aspect of court poetry in constructing and consolidating caliphal power and authority and articulating an ideology of Islamic rule, and, further, have not been adequately discussed in terms of the broader issues of Umayyad history and the formation of the Umayyad state.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Starting with the mnemonic imperative governing the use of rhetoric in pre- and early Islamic Arabic oral poetry, this essay proposes that in the later literary periods, rhetorical devices, now free of their mnemonic obligation, took on... more
Starting with the mnemonic imperative governing the use of rhetoric in pre- and early Islamic Arabic oral poetry, this essay proposes that in the later literary periods, rhetorical devices, now free of their mnemonic obligation, took on further communicative or expressive functions. In the High CAbbāsid age, rhetorical devices are “retooled” to serve as the “linguistic correlative” of Islamic hegemony as witnessed in caliphal court panegyrics of the rhetorically complex badīc style. Finally, the “rhetorical excess” of the post-classical badīciyyah (a poem to the Prophet Muḥammad in which each line must exhibit a particular rhetorical device) is interpreted as a memorial structure typical of the medieval manuscript (as opposed to modern print) tradition.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In The Cooing of the Dove and the Cawing of the Crow, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych offers original translations, close readings, and new interpretations of selected poems from the two contrasting diwans of the blind Late ʿAbbāsid... more
In The Cooing of the Dove and the Cawing of the Crow, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych offers original translations, close readings, and new interpretations of selected poems from the two contrasting diwans of the blind Late ʿAbbāsid master-poet, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (d. 449 H./1057 C.E.). The first is Saqṭ al-Zand (Sparks of the Flint), the highly esteemed collection of qaṣīdah poetry of his youth, which he later disavowed. The second is Luzūm Mā Lā Yalzam (Requiring What Is Not Required), the programmatic double-rhymed collection from his later period of withdrawal and seclusion. She argues that the contrasting ‘poetics of engagement’ and ‘poetics of disengagement’ of the two diwans reflect the transition from High Classical to Post Classical aesthetics.See Less
E-Book (PDF): OPEN ACCESS Brill Publishers
Hardback: USD $143.00
E-Book (PDF): OPEN ACCESS Brill Publishers
Hardback: USD $143.00
Research Interests:
Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Banat Su'ad of Ka'b ibn Zuhayr; Part 2... more
Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Banat Su'ad of Ka'b ibn Zuhayr; Part 2 Qasidat al-Burdah (Mantle Ode) of al-Busiri; Part 3: Nahj al-Burdah (The Way of the Mantle) by Ahmad Shawqi. Over the centuries, they have informed the poetic and religious life of the Arab and Islamic worlds. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych places her original translations of the poems within the odes' broader cultural context. By highlighting their transformative power as speech acts and their ritual function as gift exchanges, this book not only demonstrates the relevance of these poems to contemporary scholarship but also reveals their power and beauty to the modern reader.
Research Interests:
Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Banat Su'ad of Ka'b ibn Zuhayr; Part 2... more
Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Banat Su'ad of Ka'b ibn Zuhayr; Part 2 Qasidat al-Burdah (Mantle Ode) of al-Busiri; Part 3: Nahj al-Burdah (The Way of the Mantle) by Ahmad Shawqi. Over the centuries, they have informed the poetic and religious life of the Arab and Islamic worlds. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych places her original translations of the poems within the odes' broader cultural context. By highlighting their transformative power as speech acts and their ritual function as gift exchanges, this book not only demonstrates the relevance of these poems to contemporary scholarship but also reveals their power and beauty to the modern reader.
Research Interests:
Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Qasidat al-Burdah (The Mantle Ode) of... more
Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Qasidat al-Burdah (The Mantle Ode) of Ka'b ibn Zuhayr; Part 2: Qasidat al-Burdah (The Mantle Ode) of al-Busiri; Part 3: Nahj al-Burdah (The Way of the Mantle) of Ahmad Shawqi. Over the centuries, they have informed the poetic and religious life of the Arab and Islamic worlds. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych places her original translations of the poems within the odes' broader cultural context. By highlighting their transformative power as speech acts and their ritual function as gift exchanges, this book not only demonstrates the relevance of these poems to contemporary scholarship but also reveals their power and beauty to the modern reader.
Research Interests:
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich... more
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich fifteen-hundred-year history of classical Arabic literature, the qasidah served as profane anti-text to the sacred text of the Qur'an.
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Publication Date: 1993
Publication Name: Cornell University Press
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Publication Date: 1993
Publication Name: Cornell University Press
Research Interests:
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich... more
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich fifteen-hundred-year history of classical Arabic literature, the qasidah served as profane anti-text to the sacred text of the Qur'an.
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Publication Date: 1993
Publication Name: Cornell University Press
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Publication Date: 1993
Publication Name: Cornell University Press
Research Interests:
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich... more
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich fifteen-hundred-year history of classical Arabic literature, the qasidah served as profane anti-text to the sacred text of the Qur'an.
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Publication Date: 1993
Publication Name: Cornell University Press
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Publication Date: 1993
Publication Name: Cornell University Press
Research Interests:
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383. Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author.... more
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Research Interests:
Gender Studies, Arabic Literature, Arabic Poetry, Performance Studies, Classical Arabic Poetry, and 6 moreIslamic Political Thought, Ritual Theory, Islamic Intellectual History, Poetry and Politics, Ceremony, Ritual and Performance, and Islamic intellectual history, medieval political thought,Islamic philosophy and mysticism
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383. Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author.... more
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Research Interests:
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383. Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author.... more
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Research Interests:
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383. Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author.... more
Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Arabic translation, Al-Qaṣīdah wa al-Sulṭah: al-Ustūrah, al-Junūsah, wa al-Marāsim fī al-Shi‛r al-‛Arabī al-Qadīm. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
“ . . . transcends the realm of literature and poetic criticism to include virtually every field of Arabic and Islamic studies.” —Roger Allen
Throughout the classical Arabic literary tradition, from its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia until the end of the Golden Age in the 10th century, the courtly ode, or qasida, dominated other poetic forms. In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Stetkevych explores how this poetry relates to ceremony and political authority and how the classical Arabic ode encoded and promoted a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule. Beginning with praise poems to pre-Islamic Arab kings, Stetkevych takes up poetry in praise of the Prophet Mohammed and odes addressed to Arabo-Islamic rulers. She explores the rich tradition of Arabic praise poems in light of ancient Near Eastern rites and ceremonies, gender, and political culture. Stetkevych’s superb English translations capture the immediacy and vitality of classical Arabic poetry while opening up a multifaceted literary tradition for readers everywhere.
Research Interests:
Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Arabic Literature, Arabic Poetry, Performance Studies, and 9 moreReligion and Politics, Islamic Studies, Al-Andalus, Classical Arabic Poetry, Islamic Political Thought, Ritual Theory, Islamic Intellectual History, Poetry and Politics, and Ceremony, Ritual and Performance
Arabic translation of: Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ‛Abbāsid Age. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991. Studies in Arabic Literature XIII. Pp. xv + 404. Arabic translation by Ḥasan al-Bannā ‛Izz al-Dīn with the assistance of the author.... more
Arabic translation of: Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ‛Abbāsid Age. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991. Studies in Arabic Literature XIII. Pp. xv + 404.
Arabic translation by Ḥasan al-Bannā ‛Izz al-Dīn with the assistance of the author. Cairo: Al-Markaz al-Qawmī lil-Tarjamah, 2008.
Arabic translation by Ḥasan al-Bannā ‛Izz al-Dīn with the assistance of the author. Cairo: Al-Markaz al-Qawmī lil-Tarjamah, 2008.
Research Interests:
Arabic Translation of: The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode. Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010. English... more
Arabic Translation of: The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode.
Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
English Original : Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383.
Trans. Hasan al-Banna ‛Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Egyptian National Center for Translation, 2010.
English Original : Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 383.
Research Interests:
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991. Studies in Arabic Literature XIII. Pp. xv + 404. Arabic translation by Ḥasan al-Bannā ‛Izz al-Dīn with the assistance of the author. al-Shi‛r wa-al-Shi‛riyyah fī al-‛Aṣr al-‛Abbāsī: Abū Tammām: al-Badī‛,... more
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991. Studies in Arabic Literature XIII. Pp. xv + 404.
Arabic translation by Ḥasan al-Bannā ‛Izz al-Dīn with the assistance of the author. al-Shi‛r wa-al-Shi‛riyyah fī al-‛Aṣr al-‛Abbāsī: Abū Tammām: al-Badī‛, Qaṣīdat al-Madḥ, al-Ḥamāsah. Cairo: Al-Markaz al-Qawmī lil-Tarjamah, 2008.
Arabic translation by Ḥasan al-Bannā ‛Izz al-Dīn with the assistance of the author. al-Shi‛r wa-al-Shi‛riyyah fī al-‛Aṣr al-‛Abbāsī: Abū Tammām: al-Badī‛, Qaṣīdat al-Madḥ, al-Ḥamāsah. Cairo: Al-Markaz al-Qawmī lil-Tarjamah, 2008.
Research Interests:
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich... more
A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich fifteen-hundred-year history of classical Arabic literature, the qasidah served as profane anti-text to the sacred text of the Qur'an.
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on—and tested on—close readings of a number of the poems.
Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.
Research Interests:
(=The Poetics of Politics and the Politics of Poetics: Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Panegyric Ode). Trans. Hasan al-Banna `Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, Studies in Literature... more
(=The Poetics of Politics and the Politics of Poetics: Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Panegyric Ode). Trans. Hasan al-Banna `Izz al-Din in collaboration with the author. Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, Studies in Literature Series, ed. Salah Fadl, 1998. Pp. 224.
Research Interests:
Comprised of contributions from leading international scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry incorporates political, cultural, and theoretical paradigms that help place poetic projects in their socio-political contexts as well... more
Comprised of contributions from leading international scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry incorporates political, cultural, and theoretical paradigms that help place poetic projects in their socio-political contexts as well as illuminate connections across the continuum of the Arabic tradition. This volume grounds itself in the present moment and, from it, examines the transformations of the fifteen-century Arabic poetic tradition through readings, re-readings, translations, reformulations, and co-optations. Furthermore, this collection aims to deconstruct the artificial modern/pre-modern divide and to present the Arabic poetic practice as live and urgent, shaped by the experiences and challenges of the twenty-first century and at the same time in constant conversation with its long tradition. The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry actively seeks to destabilize binaries such as that of East-West in contributions that shed light on the interactions of the Arabic tradition with other Middle Eastern traditions, such as Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew, and on South-South ideological and poetic networks of solidarity that have informed poetic currents across the modern Middle East. This volume will be ideal for scholars and students of Arabic, Middle Eastern, and comparative literature, as well as non-specialists interested in poetry and in the present moment of the study of Arabic poetry.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Arabic-Poetry/Fakhreddine-Stetkevych/p/book/9780367562359
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Arabic-Poetry/Fakhreddine-Stetkevych/p/book/9780367562359
Research Interests:
Comparative Literature, Reference, Arabic Literature, Abbasid Literature, Poetics, and 10 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Al-Andalus, Pre-Islamic Arabic Literature, Classical Arabic Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Modern Arabic Literature, Literary translation, Modern Arabic Poetry, Textbook, and Literary Theory and Criticism
Edited Volume. “Quite simply: these are seminal essays. . . . Distinguished scholarship, erudite, and full of innovative ways of interpreting Arabic and Persian poetry.” —Omar Pound “[This book] reads Arabic and Persian poetry in a... more
Edited Volume.
“Quite simply: these are seminal essays. . . . Distinguished scholarship, erudite, and full of innovative ways of interpreting Arabic and Persian poetry.” —Omar Pound
“[This book] reads Arabic and Persian poetry in a refreshingly new and significant way. . . . raises our understanding . . . to a new level.” —James T. Monroe
Innovative methodologies reorient critical readings of classical Middle Eastern literature.
“Quite simply: these are seminal essays. . . . Distinguished scholarship, erudite, and full of innovative ways of interpreting Arabic and Persian poetry.” —Omar Pound
“[This book] reads Arabic and Persian poetry in a refreshingly new and significant way. . . . raises our understanding . . . to a new level.” —James T. Monroe
Innovative methodologies reorient critical readings of classical Middle Eastern literature.
Research Interests:
Edited volume in The Formation of the Classical Islamic World series. Ed. Lawrence Conrad. Ashgate/Variorum Publishers, UK. 2009. This volume brings together a set of key studies on classical Arabic poetry (ca. 500-1000 C.E.), published... more
Edited volume in The Formation of the Classical Islamic World series. Ed. Lawrence Conrad. Ashgate/Variorum Publishers, UK. 2009.
This volume brings together a set of key studies on classical Arabic poetry (ca. 500-1000 C.E.), published over the last thirty-five years; the individual articles each deal with a different approach, period, genre, or theme. The major focus is on new interpretations of the form and function of the pre-eminent classical poetic genre, the polythematic qasida, or Arabic ode, particularly explorations of its ritual, ceremonial and performance dimensions. Other articles present the typology and genre characteristics of the short monothematic forms, especially the lyrical ghazal and the wine-poem. After thus setting out the full poetic genres and their structures, the volume turns in the remaining studies to the philological, rhetorical, stylistic and motival elements of classical Arabic poetry, in their etymological, symbolic, historical and comparatist dimensions.
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych's Introduction places the articles within the context of the major critical and methodological trajectories of the field and in doing so demonstrates the increasing integration of Arabic literary studies into contemporary humanistic scholarship. The Selected Bibliography complements the Introduction and the Articles to offer the reader a full overview of the past generation of Western literary and critical scholarship on classical Arabic poetry.Contents: Introduction. Oral composition in pre-Islamic poetry, James T. Monroe; Structuralist interpretations of pre-Islamic poetry: critique and new dimensions, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych; Islamic kingship and Arabic panegyric poetry of the early 9th century, Stefan Sperl; The poetic coterie of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 247 H.): a contribution to the analysis of authorities of socio-literary legitimation, J. E. Bencheike; The uses of the qasida: thematic and structural patterns in a poem of Bashshar, Julie Scott Meisami; Abbasid praise poetry in light of dramatic discourse and speech act theory, Beatrice Gruendler; Revisiting Layla al-Akhyaliya's trespass, Dana Sajdi; Time and reality in nasib and ghazal, Renate Jacobi; Heterotopia and the wine poem in early Islamic culture, Yaseen Noorani; Sensibility and synaesthesia: Ibn al-Rumi's singing slave girl, Akiko Motoyoshi; Name and epithet: the philology and semiotics of animal nomenclature in early Arabic poetry, Jaroslav Stetkevych; Guises of the ghul: dissembling simile and semantic overflow in the classical Arabic nasib, Michael A. Sells; From primary to secondary qasidas: thoughts on the development of classical Arabic poetry, M.M. Badawi; Toward a redefinition of 'badi' poetry, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych. Index.
This volume brings together a set of key studies on classical Arabic poetry (ca. 500-1000 C.E.), published over the last thirty-five years; the individual articles each deal with a different approach, period, genre, or theme. The major focus is on new interpretations of the form and function of the pre-eminent classical poetic genre, the polythematic qasida, or Arabic ode, particularly explorations of its ritual, ceremonial and performance dimensions. Other articles present the typology and genre characteristics of the short monothematic forms, especially the lyrical ghazal and the wine-poem. After thus setting out the full poetic genres and their structures, the volume turns in the remaining studies to the philological, rhetorical, stylistic and motival elements of classical Arabic poetry, in their etymological, symbolic, historical and comparatist dimensions.
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych's Introduction places the articles within the context of the major critical and methodological trajectories of the field and in doing so demonstrates the increasing integration of Arabic literary studies into contemporary humanistic scholarship. The Selected Bibliography complements the Introduction and the Articles to offer the reader a full overview of the past generation of Western literary and critical scholarship on classical Arabic poetry.Contents: Introduction. Oral composition in pre-Islamic poetry, James T. Monroe; Structuralist interpretations of pre-Islamic poetry: critique and new dimensions, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych; Islamic kingship and Arabic panegyric poetry of the early 9th century, Stefan Sperl; The poetic coterie of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 247 H.): a contribution to the analysis of authorities of socio-literary legitimation, J. E. Bencheike; The uses of the qasida: thematic and structural patterns in a poem of Bashshar, Julie Scott Meisami; Abbasid praise poetry in light of dramatic discourse and speech act theory, Beatrice Gruendler; Revisiting Layla al-Akhyaliya's trespass, Dana Sajdi; Time and reality in nasib and ghazal, Renate Jacobi; Heterotopia and the wine poem in early Islamic culture, Yaseen Noorani; Sensibility and synaesthesia: Ibn al-Rumi's singing slave girl, Akiko Motoyoshi; Name and epithet: the philology and semiotics of animal nomenclature in early Arabic poetry, Jaroslav Stetkevych; Guises of the ghul: dissembling simile and semantic overflow in the classical Arabic nasib, Michael A. Sells; From primary to secondary qasidas: thoughts on the development of classical Arabic poetry, M.M. Badawi; Toward a redefinition of 'badi' poetry, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych. Index.
Research Interests:
Available open access here: https://www.ithra.com/files/6516/0984/6883/Al_Muallaqat.pdf The Mu`allaqat for Millennials, Pre-Islamic Arabic Golden Odes, published by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in cooperation with... more
Available open access here: https://www.ithra.com/files/6516/0984/6883/Al_Muallaqat.pdf
The Mu`allaqat for Millennials, Pre-Islamic Arabic Golden Odes, published by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in cooperation with the AlQafilah Magazine, both initiatives of Saudi Aramco.
Aiming to make the mu`allaqat known to new readers, the project gathers a team of eight commentators and translators. They include Abdallah S. Alroshaid, Professor of Arabic Literature at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud University; Saudi writer and physician Adi Alherbish; New York University Clinical Associate Professor David Larsen; Huda J. Fakhreddine, Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania; Kevin Blankinship, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at Brigham Young University; Saleh Said Alzahrani, Professor of Rhetoric and Criticism at Umm al-Qura University; Sami Abdulaziz AlAjlan, Assistant Professor of Literary Criticism at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud University; and Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University.
At the helm are Hatem Alzahrani, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at Umm al-Qura University, and Bander Alharbi, editor-in-chief of AlQafilah Magazine. You can read Professor Alzahrani’s published introduction here (https://arablit.org/2020/12/19/introducing-the-muallaqat-for-millennials/), and a report by the King Abdulaziz Center here (https://www.ithra.com/en/muallaqat/).
The Mu`allaqat for Millennials, Pre-Islamic Arabic Golden Odes, published by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in cooperation with the AlQafilah Magazine, both initiatives of Saudi Aramco.
Aiming to make the mu`allaqat known to new readers, the project gathers a team of eight commentators and translators. They include Abdallah S. Alroshaid, Professor of Arabic Literature at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud University; Saudi writer and physician Adi Alherbish; New York University Clinical Associate Professor David Larsen; Huda J. Fakhreddine, Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania; Kevin Blankinship, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at Brigham Young University; Saleh Said Alzahrani, Professor of Rhetoric and Criticism at Umm al-Qura University; Sami Abdulaziz AlAjlan, Assistant Professor of Literary Criticism at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud University; and Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University.
At the helm are Hatem Alzahrani, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at Umm al-Qura University, and Bander Alharbi, editor-in-chief of AlQafilah Magazine. You can read Professor Alzahrani’s published introduction here (https://arablit.org/2020/12/19/introducing-the-muallaqat-for-millennials/), and a report by the King Abdulaziz Center here (https://www.ithra.com/en/muallaqat/).